News briefs from around Florida

Center for Jewish students opens at South Florida university

BOCA RATON -- A new center for Jewish students has opened on Florida Atlantic University's campus.

The addition will serve as a hub for the approximately 1,600 Jewish students at FAU and about 5,000 other Jewish students at surrounding universities.

For 25 years, members of Hillel of Broward and Palm Beach, the Jewish student organization, moved from one temporary space to another, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

In December, the Mildred & Abner Levine and Ruth & Saul Weinberger Jewish Life Center opened as an extension to the library. The new facility includes administrative and student offices, a kosher coffee shop, large multipurpose room and meeting rooms.

Police: Man fatally shoots friend accidentally

DAYTONA BEACH -- A 20-year-old man was charged with manslaughter after he accidentally shot his friend, authorities said.

Sean Page told Volusia County Sheriff's deputies he was playing with a .45-caliber handgun which he thought was not loaded at a party Sunday night. Throughout the evening Page pointed the gun in jest at his victim, John Debella Jr., 19, and others, authorities said.

Ten minutes before the New Year began, witnesses said Page pointed the gun at Debella, who played along, adjusting the gun so that it pointed directly at his forehead. Page had his finger on the trigger and said Debella's movement nudged Page's finger on the trigger, causing the gun to go off, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported for Tuesday's edition.

Page was being held without bail in the Volusia County Branch Jail.

No break in search for kidnapped infant

NAPLES -- It's been a month since little Bryan Dos Santos Gomes was snatched from his mother at knifepoint, and police are still looking for a break in the case.

A task force has run down more than 400 leads in the search for the infant, now a little more than two months old, Fort Myers police spokesman Shelly Flynn said. She described the hunt for the baby as "pretty much status quo."

Bryan has now been gone from his parents longer than he was with them.

"I spend the day waiting for the baby. There is no sense doing anything else," said the boy's mother, Maria Fatima Ramos Dos Santos. "Christmas was very strange this year. I went to church, but I felt like God had abandoned me."

Bryan was taken from his mother at knifepoint on Dec. 1 by a woman in an SUV who gave them a ride. Investigators said the baby might have been taken because his parents failed to pay human smugglers. Bryan's parents were brought into the United States illegally from Brazil, but failed to pay the smugglers' entire fee, police said. The parents have disputed this theory.

Police initially thought the boy was likely taken by a woman looking to steal a baby to claim as her own. Ramos, 23, said she still thinks "a crazy woman" took her son.

The boy's father, Jurandir Gomes Costa, 26, said he is frustrated by the focus on smugglers.

"I don't know the reason that it happened," he said. "We can't understand why it's taking the police so long to get this person. This lady has to be somewhere, and they need to catch her."